Duke President Brodhead: Undo Your Bonehead Blunder
As more facts come to light in the Duke University "rape" case, it is becoming crystal clear that the accuser and the District Attorney are the villains and the "Duke Three" are the victims of false accusation and prosecution for personal and political purposes.
After (1) a North Carolina Central State student (Crystal Gail Magnum, the pathetic ex-convict stripper and "escort" and patently unbelievable accuser in the Duke rape hoax) and (2) a North Carolina law school graduate who went into the Durham District Attorney's office, stayed there until he was appointed (NOT elected) District Attorney, and was about to lose a Democrat primary (and his job) the first time he faced voters (Mike Nifong) unless he suddenly endeared himself to Durham County, North Carolina's black Democrat voters teamed up (1) to try to destroy Duke's men's lacrosse team because her gig as a stripper was not as pleasant and lucrative as she had hoped and (2) to indict three members of the team (three being a much more manageable number than twenty) in the hope that a jury would convict them and a subsequent civil suit against them would be simple, successful and lucrative, the President of Duke University (Richard H. Brodhead) (1) genuflected at the altar of political correctness, (2) treated the accuser as credible and the District Attorney as fair, objective and professional instead of unfair, biased and political, (3) cancelled the Duke men's lacrosse team's season and (4)suspended the two indicted sophomores (the third indictee was fortunate enough to graduate before Crystal finally got around to making him no. 3).
What has transpired subsequently has demonstrated that the accuser and the District Attorney are the villains (or mental cases) and the Duke Three are the victims of false accusation and prosecution for personal and political purposes.
Having seriously and senselessly damaged the two sophomores by jumping to the conclusion that their indictments were well-founded instead of realizing that they were being wrongly hounded, Mr. Brodhead should reinstate them immediately. If he has any shame, he will do that. (Then he should resign, because he has done extraordinary damage to Duke University as well as to the Duke Three and Duke needs a responsible President.)
When the gang rape accusation was made, Mr. Brodhead, as President of Duke University, needed to make a choice. He could invoke the presumption of innocence in the absence of clear and convincing evidence of guilt (and let the sophomores continue their expensive education) or he could presume they were guilty (and bar them from continuing their studies at Duke). So much for Duke's "home field advantage." Mr. Brodhead quickly chose to abandon three Duke student athletes (and their families and friends) and suspended the sophomores, sending the message that they were embarrassments to Duke and presumed even by Duke to be guilty.
It turns out that EACH of the Duke Three has passed a polygraph examination with respect to the charges on which they were indicted. (I haven't seen a report that the accuser even took one, much less passed.)
Admit your monumental mistake, Mr. Brodhead. Reinstate the sophomores immediately and personally apologize to each of the Duke Three.
Ryan McFayden, another sophomore on Duke's men's lacrosse team, stupidly (at best) sent an e-mail dated the night of the now infamous Duke men's lacrosse team party (at least it was off-campus) describing in morbid detail the torture of exotic dancers and declaring: "I plan on killing the bitches as soon as they walk in and proceeding to cut their skin off while [word deleted] in my Duke issue spandex."
Ironically, Mr. McFayden HAS been reinstated! (I have learned that Mr. McFayden was trying to be funny and some how was inspired by a movie called "America Psycho" (which I don't want to watch), but there is NO dispute that he actually wrote and sent the noxious email. In contrast, the chance that the indictments against the Duke Three were well founded is nil.)
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
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